Lorn’s scouts seize a camel supply vessel bound for Pliny’s fleet at Hildas Station. Darrow, Roque, Victra, Sevro, the Howlers, the Telemanuses, Lorn, Mustang, and Ragnar hide among ration crates during the fifteen-hour ride. Mustang avoids Darrow after rebuffing his apology, and Lorn needles him about love and war.

Lorn advises that winning Praetors and bannermen requires aligning their interests, as Pliny has, and warns the Sovereign’s backing makes them hard to sway. He has evacuated his household from Europa to avoid Octavia’s reprisals. Noticing Ragnar, Lorn calls him a weapon and insists men do not change, citing his execution of Tactus. Darrow rejects the fatalism, vowing to prove otherwise.

Darrow finds Ragnar in the freezer, covered in runes, and presses him on obedience and desire. Ragnar defines himself by service to the Allmother, cutting his palm to reaffirm his binding oath. Darrow challenges the conditioning, asking what Ragnar wants and proposing freedom, which frightens Ragnar, who believes freedom “drowns.”

Darrow smears his blood over Ragnar’s Obsidian sigils and Ragnar’s blood over his own gold, declaring them brothers of the same flesh. He releases Ragnar from service and insists Ragnar choose his own path. Ragnar protests that refusal to serve means annihilation for his people and recites the indoctrinated creed to fear and serve Gold.

Darrow counters with a hidden history of humanity’s freedom, recalls the Obsidian culling, and then reveals his own truth: he is not Gold. He tells Ragnar of Eo’s execution, his own death, and Ares’s second chance, asking Ragnar to choose the hard path and rise as a friend. Darrow leaves without forcing an answer, trusting that a freely chosen ally is stronger than a bound slave.